July 2007 Monthly Archive

July 31, 2007

Rasmussen: Edwards Leads Giuliani by Seven, Thompson by Eleven

A new Rasmussen Reports Election 2008 survey shows former Senator John Edwards (D) opening up a seven-point lead of 49% to 42% over former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R). In late June, the two contenders were tied, and earlier in that month Edwards held only a four-point lead.

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Rasmussen | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: The Polls... Republicans vs Democrats

 

FCC Approves Airwave Use For All Phones

Consumers will be able to use any cellphone and software they want on a network built on airwaves to be auctioned early next year, according to rules approved yesterday by the Federal Communications Commission. The vote sets the stage for the auction of public airwaves that will change hands from television broadcasters to a fast-growing wireless industry. The auction, scheduled for January, is expected to raise about $15 billion for the U.S. Treasury.

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Kim Hart - Washington Post | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: Science and Technology

 

Terrorism: The Saudi Connection

ALMOST SIX YEARS after September 11, 2001, and more than four years since the beginning of the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq, the American government and media have begun to admit something every informed and honest Muslim in the world has known all along. That is: the "Sunni insurgency" in Iraq, as well as 9/11 and certain acts of extremist Sunni violence inside Iraq before then, are consequences of the official status of the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi sect in Saudi Arabia, Iraq's southern neighbor. Saudi Wahhabi clerics have preached and recruited for terror in Iraq; Saudi money has sustained it; the largest number of those who have carried out suicide bombings north of the Saudi-Iraqi border have been Saudi citizens.

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Stephen Schwartz - Weekly Standard | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

California's Real Estate Meltdown

If Wall Street wants to get even more worried about the real estate market, it need look no further than southern California. There, the culprits aren't just the bad-credit borrowers whom banks and lenders loaded up with ballooning debt to purchase their dream homes. The well-to-do have partaken of those treacherous loans as well. And now everyone is hard-pressed to pay as interest rates rise.

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Sonja Steptoe - Time | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

UPDATE - Roberts Back at Summer Home After Seizure

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. left the hospital yesterday, smiling and waving, to continue his summer vacation in Maine, but he faces a decision on whether medication will be needed to control the kind of seizure he had Monday afternoon. People who have had two seizures -- Roberts had another in 1993 -- have a 70 percent chance of experiencing subsequent seizures, said Gregory Krauss, an associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

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Robert Barnes and Shankar Vedantam - New York Times | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

U.S. Toll in Iraq Lowest in 8 Months

The U.S. military said Tuesday that a Marine was killed in fighting west of the capital, bringing the American death toll for July to at least 73 - still the lowest in eight months. An Apache helicopter also went down Tuesday after coming under fire in a predominantly Shiite area in eastern Baghdad, but both crew members were safely evacuated, the military said. President Bush's nominee to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, meanwhile, acknowledged that slow progress in Iraq is hurting America's credibility and emboldening Iran's regional ambitions.

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Sinan Salaheddin - Associated Press | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

A Century of Bancroft-family Ownership at Dow Jones & Co. is Over

A century of Bancroft-family ownership at Dow Jones & Co. is over. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. sealed a $5 billion agreement to purchase the publisher of The Wall Street Journal after three months of drama in the controlling family and public debate about journalistic values.

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Sarah Ellison and Matthew Karnitschnig | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: Breaking Story Highlights

 

Union at Dow Jones Hits Murdoch Victory, Urges Negotiations

The Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, Local 1096, which represents over 2000 Dow Jones professionals, quickly criticized the reported victory for Rupert Murdoch today in his bid to buy Dow Jones. Early this afternoon, a statement emerged from IAPE President Steve Yount, declaring that the union is "disappointed with the apparent decision by key Bancroft family members to support the sale of Dow Jones & Company to News Corp.

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Editor & Publisher | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: Breaking Story Highlights

 

Murdoch Grew up on 'ritual feuding with other media'

It's hard to find anyone indifferent about News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch. Fans see him as a visionary — someone who has used shrewd understanding of finance and a keen sense of popular tastes to shake up the media business as he built a movie, TV, newspaper, magazine and book empire. Fox Broadcasting — his biggest achievement — helped to break the collective lock on prime-time TV by ABC, CBS and NBC. Fox News offered a lively alternative to CNN.

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David Lieberman - USA Today | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

Newspaper Dynasties' Tough Choice: Money, or Duty to Society?

The Bancroft family, which has controlled the prestigious Wall Street Journal for more than a century, is the latest newspaper dynasty to be dismantled by the pressures of the Internet age. Its agreement today to sell Dow Jones & Co., the Journal's parent, for $5 billion to media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. shows how the industry's most powerful families have faced a tough choice: Cash out or watch their fortunes deteriorate as more readers and advertisers migrate to online news sources such as Yahoo and Google.

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Joseph Menn and Thomas S. Mulligan | Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News